I’ve been suffering from a bad reading slump. I was stuck in a historical novel that I really should have liked, but it just seemed to drag on forever. I was reading a couple of pages every few days and struggling. I finally gave up. To get out of my slump I needed something entirely different.
I chose Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz. It couldn’t be more different from my usual fare.
The narrator is Angus Mooney, a petty criminal, who happens to be dead. He had a terrible childhood – abandoned by his parents at age three, then in and out of foster care. He ended up making ends meet through property crime, drug dealing, mugging, and possibly accidental murder. He drifts without purpose through life until he meets Gracie, an ebullient, sarcastic wedding officiant. He falls in love.
Unfortunately, Owen, a man dying of an incurable brain disease, also falls in love with her. He murders Angus when Gracie is a few months pregnant with Angus’ child. Owen has already moved into their house, and now he makes his move on Gracie.
Sounds horrible, right?
Angus is in the otherworld. He’s mortified to learn that there even is an otherworld because he has never believed in anything. And now he has to navigate a new existence, which is regrettably similar to his old one. It’s hard for him to get his bearings.
Meanwhile, back in the land of the living, a new epidemic is quickly exterminating the human population of earth. Gracie is dealing with the end of the world, pregnancy, widowhood, and the slow death of the man who has invaded her home, and to some extent, her heart.
It should be a morbid horror story. It is, and yet it is also very funny. The ironic voices of Angus and Gracie, as well as their strangely awful yet compelling personalities, make this a fun read from start to finish. Even if ironic, dark, apocalyptic literature is not your favorite thing, this is well worth the read.
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